ok ive been wanting to switch over to linux for years, ive tried many distrobutions inclooding redhat, kbuntu, ubuntu, and many others.

what im looking for is somthing which is easy to customize the way the system looks such as the K icon and overall feel of the os, somthing that i can play my windows only games on (thankfully UT3 is linux compatable), and somthing that is secure.

im willing to learn but at the same time i need a system that is user friendly, i hope i am not asking to much because i realy dont lke the way M$ has a strangle hold on the market and i realy want to brake away from them

03-02-2008

Manchunian

Welcome to Linuxforums!

Quote:

what im looking for is somthing which is easy to customize the way the system looks such as the K icon

The extent to which you can customise depends on what environment you're using and the amount of tweaking you're prepared to put in it. Kde is usually easier to configure in this way than Gnome, but that's because it has more built-in tools to do this. Other environments will require more work; with Fluxbox you'll need to manually change files via the command line.

Quote:

somthing that i can play my windows only games on

For the moment this is not Linux's strong point. Some things will work via Cedega, but if you're a serious gamer, best keep Windows and have a dual-boot machine.

Quote:

somthing that is secure.

This doesn't really depend on the distribution you use. Linux is more secure than Windows, but all distros are more or less as secure as each other. The only difference really is if they use su or sudo, but it's not a massive issue.

Quote:

i need a system that is user friendly

I suggest Ubuntu or Kubuntu if you prefer Kde. Avoid Debian/Slackware/Gentoo etc, at least for the moment.

Hope that helps.

Good luck

03-02-2008

oz

I agree pretty much with everything Manchunian said. Probably any of the distros in the top 5 at distrowatch.com would be good for starters.

Have fun experimenting with Linux.

03-02-2008

nightsider

i herd wine was good to emulate windows software

03-02-2008

Manchunian

Quote:

i herd wine was good to emulate windows software

Well, a-hem, let's say the mileage you get with it depends on the software. Word works well, but you'd be better off getting Crossover - which costs around $30. It's basically Wine but much better. I can run kids cd-roms with this, but neither it nor Cedega support Direct X, at least not for the moment. In short, don't rely on Wine to run your games! Remember, the basic rule is run what is meant for Windows on Windows and find a Linux equivilant for Linux.

03-04-2008

i92guboj

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manchunian

Well, a-hem, let's say the mileage you get with it depends on the software. Word works well, but you'd be better off getting Crossover - which costs around $30. It's basically Wine but much better. I can run kids cd-roms with this, but neither it nor Cedega support Direct X, at least not for the moment. In short, don't rely on Wine to run your games! Remember, the basic rule is run what is meant for Windows on Windows and find a Linux equivilant for Linux.

I have no experience with crossover, so I don't really know if they do offer anything that the regular wine doesn't. Cedega, definitely, doesn't.

About the directx support, well, it depends on what do you mean.

You can't use the ms directx under wine, if that's what you mean. But wine itself ships with an alternative implementation of directx, which is getting more and more complete everyday. And nowadays, it is complete enough to run last generation games like oblivion or nwn2, which is not bad at all.

See here if you want some numbers about the state of the wine directx alternative api implementation:

Direct3d and directdraw are nearly complete, and almost fully functional, which is what matters for games. Netplay still needs some love, though.

So, strictly speaking, you are right: wine doesn't support directx, but instead, it implements its own directx clone.

03-04-2008

Manchunian

Thanks for that last post i92guboj - it's very encouraging what you say. I myself am not really a gamer, so I don't have a lot of direct experience in this matter (apart from getting little games like Planet Penguin Racer going for the kids!). Seems like things are going in the right direction. Still, I don't take back everything I said, and I think you'd confirm this: niether Cedega or Crossover can be guaranteed to work on anything: it's a case-by-case situation.

03-04-2008

i92guboj

That's true if you mean "out of the box". And as I say, I can't tell your about crossover since I don't have any experience with it.

But if we consider just cedega vs. wine, wine wins by far. In cedega you might have better luck running some games on a first try without actually needing to tweak anything. Because cedega is just that: an easier to use wine.

But its now much behind wine. It is not up to date. It hasn't been updated and lacks much of the stuff that's now in wine, and not only directx stuff. So, while wine might need additional setup, it can run ALL the cedega stuff, + much more, as long as you are willing to spend some time to set it up.

The only thing that works better in cedega is the anticopy stuff. But that can be easily overcome in most cases by alternative methods.

I haven't find a single thing that can work in cedega and not in wine.

Oh, and another thing that cedega does like crap is Xinerama/Twinview in some games. Which in turn makes it completely useless for me.

I'm not a gamer either, mostly because I don't really have much time to play. But I have experience with both of them.

While cedega concentrates in getting better support for one or two games, wine's focus is to achieve better compatibility with the windows and directx api, which is the right thing to do in my humble opinion.

03-20-2008

weedeater64

Quote:

Originally Posted by Manchunian

Welcome to Linuxforums!

I suggest Ubuntu or Kubuntu if you prefer Kde. Avoid Debian/Slackware/Gentoo etc, at least for the moment.

Hope that helps.

Good luck

I'm definetly IT challenged, I tried messing with peanut linux circa 1998 and gave up in about a month. Then a couple of years ago I tried again with suse 10 and breezy badger, a much better experience, but after a couple of months without sound I gave up again. About a month ago Micripoff XPeed on my 10 year old dell. So I at it again. I downloaded DSL , and Puppy, and was suprised when the sound worked with both. So I did a little reading and got myself a debian netinstall Iso. And now I'm learning and lovin it. I've had a couple of problems, but enjoy the challenge of trying to fix them, and having some succes. Believe me If my drug and alcohol abused brain can use debian you can to. Thanks to all who help others and build these things, I'm done with Microglomorate. Dive in the water is fine.:D

Jeff Pugh

03-20-2008

Manchunian

Nice to hear about your experiences, Jeff. Don't hesitate to post if you have any more problems.